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  • Including some static html files?

    - by user246114
    Hi, Where can we place static html files in our war file? For example, a default project has this: war/projectname.html I'd like to just make a few static folders with static pages that are like: war/projectname.html war/signup/index.html war/about/index.html so that my users can just hit those static pages like: www.myproject.com/signup www.myproject.com/about where would I put folders like that in our project tree? I tried putting them under war/, just beside projectname.html (like above), but they don't seem to be available there, I just get a 404 error, Thanks

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  • php $_SESSION[document_root] too far down the tree

    - by Idealflip
    Hi, I have multiple sub-domains within the document_root. And multiple folders/classes within those sub-domain folders. I need something that will help me with my include_once paths, but $_SESSION[DOCUMENT_ROOT] goes too far down. And if I were to use this, and transfer the website folder later, all my include_once paths will/might break. Hope my question is clear... Any recommendations?

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  • How to find which existing .NET solutions contain a project?

    - by Daniel Daranas
    I am exploring a structure of folders with C# projects such as the following: Projects ProjectA ProjectB ProjectC ProjectD Scattered around in the same folders as the .csproj files, there are several solution (.sln) files. Is there a fast way to find all the solutions that contain ProjectD.vsproj? I can open them one by one and see what they contain, but I would like a feature such as "find all the solutions containing this project".

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  • Store SMS received/sent on/from a port(other than 0)

    - by sourabh0612
    I have configured my J2ME application to send/receive SMS on a specific port.Is there any special way to store such SMS, sent/received by the application, on a RecordStore created by the application? PS-Special way is in the context that the entire SMS with all its attributes are stored in 1 entry and any the attributes can be retrieved back easily.

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  • How to find which existing .NET solutions contain a certain project?

    - by Daniel Daranas
    I am exploring a structure of folders with C# projects such as the following: Projects ProjectA ProjectB ProjectC ProjectD Scattered around in the same folders as the .csproj files, there are several solution (.sln) files. Is there a fast way to find all the solutions that contain ProjectD.csproj? I can open them one by one and see what they contain, but I would like a feature such as "find all the solutions containing this project".

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  • Cakephp Request data from other controller

    - by Swen
    Is it possible to request data from an other controller in cakePHP? For example, i created 2 folders in pages called search and update (both with a index.ctp) and a controller and model in the correct folders. Both pages are using a different db source, and i wnat to display some data from the search controller into the view of the update page.. Is this possble? Regards, Swen

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  • Importing old mysql data folder

    - by samgoody
    After a reinstall, all of the old data still shows inside the MySQL/data folder, but is not actually loaded into the database. Is there any way to have MySQL scan it's data folder and / or reimport the old folders it has from its previous install? [Some data was changed after the last backup / export - partially my fault - so I would rather it recognize the folders rather than reimporting the SQL files.]

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  • How can I automatically refactor my classes to use the default namespace for the folder they're in?

    - by Daniel Schaffer
    I've been playing around with the structure of my project, and I'd like to reset the namespaces of my classes to what the default would be. That is, the default namespace for the project, plus each of the folders in the hierarchy. It's not as simple as just find + replace, since I've both added and renamed some folders, and files from some namespaces were split into multiple other namespaces. I'm using VS 2010.

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  • CMake with include and source paths - basic setup

    - by user912403
    I'm trying to set up a test project looking like my own project just to get things working first and it looks like this: /MainProject/inc/main.h /MainProject/src/main.cpp /LibProject/inc/test.h /LibProject/src/test.cpp I've found some tutorials, but I cant find out how to set up this when I have the inc and src folder? How would the CMakeLists.txt files look? Would I have one in /, one in each of the project folders? It seems like I dont need to have one in the inc and src folders?

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  • Trying to parse out the $_POST key names that I don't want

    - by Adam
    $post_keys = array_keys($_POST); $special_keys = array(); for($i=0;$i<count($post_keys);$i++){ if(strpos($post_keys[$i], "special") !== false){ $special_keys[] = $post_keys[$i]; } } I have numerous post vars with naming conventions such as special0, special0_time, special0_duration, special1, special1_time etc.... What I want to do is to find out how many main groups there are, so special0, special1 etc... The code I currently have searches all key names that have "special" in it, thus retrieving more than I want.

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  • convert &uuml; to u

    - by Remus Rigo
    hi all I'm using a database that contains contacts (fields like name, address, ...). If i'm using in my database a city that contains special chars (like ü) or html codes (like &uuml;), then how can i convert them to u, so when i search for a city that contains that a special char should be shown in the result...

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  • Permissions restoring from Time Machine - Finder copy vs "cp" copy

    - by Ben Challenor
    Note: this question was starting to sprawl so I rewrote it. I have a folder that I'm trying to restore from a Time Machine backup. Using cp -R works fine, but certain folders cannot be restored with either the Time Machine UI or Finder. Other users have reported similar errors and the cp -R workaround was suggested (e.g. Restoring from Time Machine - Permissions Error). But I wanted to understand: Why cp -R works when the Finder and the Time Machine UI do not. Whether I could prevent the errors by changing file permissions before the backup. There do indeed seem to be some permissions that Finder works with and some that it does not. I've narrowed the errors down to folders with the user ben (that's me) and the group wheel. Here's a simplified reproduction. I have four folders with the owner/group combinations I've seen so far: ben ~/Desktop/test $ ls -lea total 16 drwxr-xr-x 7 ben staff 238 27 Nov 14:31 . drwx------+ 17 ben staff 578 27 Nov 14:29 .. 0: group:everyone deny delete -rw-r--r--@ 1 ben staff 6148 27 Nov 14:31 .DS_Store drwxr-xr-x 3 ben staff 102 27 Nov 14:30 ben-staff drwxr-xr-x 3 ben wheel 102 27 Nov 14:30 ben-wheel drwxr-xr-x 3 root admin 102 27 Nov 14:31 root-admin drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 27 Nov 14:31 root-wheel Each contains a single file called file with the same owner/group: ben ~/Desktop/test $ cd ben-staff ben ~/Desktop/test/ben-staff $ ls -lea total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 ben staff 102 27 Nov 14:30 . drwxr-xr-x 7 ben staff 238 27 Nov 14:31 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 ben staff 0 27 Nov 14:30 file In the backup, they look like this: ben /Volumes/Deimos/Backups.backupdb/Ben’s MacBook Air/Latest/Macintosh HD/Users/ben/Desktop/test $ ls -leA total 16 -rw-r--r--@ 1 ben staff 6148 27 Nov 14:34 .DS_Store 0: group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown drwxr-xr-x@ 3 ben staff 102 27 Nov 14:51 ben-staff 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown drwxr-xr-x@ 3 ben wheel 102 27 Nov 14:51 ben-wheel 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root admin 102 27 Nov 14:52 root-admin 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 27 Nov 14:52 root-wheel 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown Of these, ben-staff can be restored with Finder without errors. root-wheel and root-admin ask for my password and then restore without errors. But ben-wheel does not prompt for my password and gives the error: The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access “file”. Interestingly, I can restore the file from this folder by dragging it directly to my local drive (instead of dragging its parent folder), but when I do so its permissions are changed to ben/staff. Here are the permissions after the restore for the three folders that worked correctly, and the file from ben-wheel that was changed to ben/staff. ben ~/Desktop/test-restore $ ls -leA total 16 -rw-r--r--@ 1 ben staff 6148 27 Nov 14:46 .DS_Store drwxr-xr-x 3 ben staff 102 27 Nov 14:30 ben-staff -rw-r--r-- 1 ben staff 0 27 Nov 14:30 file drwxr-xr-x 3 root admin 102 27 Nov 14:31 root-admin drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 27 Nov 14:31 root-wheel Can anyone explain this behaviour? Why do Finder and the Time Machine UI break with the ben / wheel permissions? And why does cp -R work (even without sudo)?

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  • MvcExtensions – Bootstrapping

    - by kazimanzurrashid
    When you create a new ASP.NET MVC application you will find that the global.asax contains the following lines: namespace MvcApplication1 { // Note: For instructions on enabling IIS6 or IIS7 classic mode, // visit http://go.microsoft.com/?LinkId=9394801 public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication { public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults ); } protected void Application_Start() { AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } } } As the application grows, there are quite a lot of plumbing code gets into the global.asax which quickly becomes a design smell. Lets take a quick look at the code of one of the open source project that I recently visited: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute("Default","{controller}/{action}/{id}", new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }); } protected override void OnApplicationStarted() { Error += OnError; EndRequest += OnEndRequest; var settings = new SparkSettings() .AddNamespace("System") .AddNamespace("System.Collections.Generic") .AddNamespace("System.Web.Mvc") .AddNamespace("System.Web.Mvc.Html") .AddNamespace("MvcContrib.FluentHtml") .AddNamespace("********") .AddNamespace("********.Web") .SetPageBaseType("ApplicationViewPage") .SetAutomaticEncoding(true); #if DEBUG settings.SetDebug(true); #endif var viewFactory = new SparkViewFactory(settings); ViewEngines.Engines.Add(viewFactory); #if !DEBUG PrecompileViews(viewFactory); #endif RegisterAllControllersIn("********.Web"); log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); Factory.Load(new Components.WebDependencies()); ModelBinders.Binders.DefaultBinder = new Binders.GenericBinderResolver(Factory.TryGet<IModelBinder>); ValidatorConfiguration.Initialize("********"); HtmlValidationExtensions.Initialize(ValidatorConfiguration.Rules); } private void OnEndRequest(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { if (((HttpApplication)sender).Context.Handler is MvcHandler) { CreateKernel().Get<ISessionSource>().Close(); } } private void OnError(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { CreateKernel().Get<ISessionSource>().Close(); } protected override IKernel CreateKernel() { return Factory.Kernel; } private static void PrecompileViews(SparkViewFactory viewFactory) { var batch = new SparkBatchDescriptor(); batch.For<HomeController>().For<ManageController>(); viewFactory.Precompile(batch); } As you can see there are quite a few of things going on in the above code, Registering the ViewEngine, Compiling the Views, Registering the Routes/Controllers/Model Binders, Settings up Logger, Validations and as you can imagine the more it becomes complex the more things will get added in the application start. One of the goal of the MVCExtensions is to reduce the above design smell. Instead of writing all the plumbing code in the application start, it contains BootstrapperTask to register individual services. Out of the box, it contains BootstrapperTask to register Controllers, Controller Factory, Action Invoker, Action Filters, Model Binders, Model Metadata/Validation Providers, ValueProvideraFactory, ViewEngines etc and it is intelligent enough to automatically detect the above types and register into the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Other than the built-in tasks you can create your own custom task which will be automatically executed when the application starts. When the BootstrapperTasks are in action you will find the global.asax pretty much clean like the following: public class MvcApplication : UnityMvcApplication { public void ErrorLog_Filtering(object sender, ExceptionFilterEventArgs e) { Check.Argument.IsNotNull(e, "e"); HttpException exception = e.Exception.GetBaseException() as HttpException; if ((exception != null) && (exception.GetHttpCode() == (int)HttpStatusCode.NotFound)) { e.Dismiss(); } } } The above code is taken from my another open source project Shrinkr, as you can see the global.asax is longer cluttered with any plumbing code. One special thing you have noticed that it is inherited from the UnityMvcApplication rather than regular HttpApplication. There are separate version of this class for each IoC Container like NinjectMvcApplication, StructureMapMvcApplication etc. Other than executing the built-in tasks, the Shrinkr also has few custom tasks which gets executed when the application starts. For example, when the application starts, we want to ensure that the default users (which is specified in the web.config) are created. The following is the custom task that is used to create those default users: public class CreateDefaultUsers : BootstrapperTask { protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(IServiceLocator serviceLocator) { IUserRepository userRepository = serviceLocator.GetInstance<IUserRepository>(); IUnitOfWork unitOfWork = serviceLocator.GetInstance<IUnitOfWork>(); IEnumerable<User> users = serviceLocator.GetInstance<Settings>().DefaultUsers; bool shouldCommit = false; foreach (User user in users) { if (userRepository.GetByName(user.Name) == null) { user.AllowApiAccess(ApiSetting.InfiniteLimit); userRepository.Add(user); shouldCommit = true; } } if (shouldCommit) { unitOfWork.Commit(); } return TaskContinuation.Continue; } } There are several other Tasks in the Shrinkr that we are also using which you will find in that project. To create a custom bootstrapping task you have create a new class which either implements the IBootstrapperTask interface or inherits from the abstract BootstrapperTask class, I would recommend to start with the BootstrapperTask as it already has the required code that you have to write in case if you choose the IBootstrapperTask interface. As you can see in the above code we are overriding the ExecuteCore to create the default users, the MVCExtensions is responsible for populating the  ServiceLocator prior calling this method and in this method we are using the service locator to get the dependencies that are required to create the users (I will cover the custom dependencies registration in the next post). Once the users are created, we are returning a special enum, TaskContinuation as the return value, the TaskContinuation can have three values Continue (default), Skip and Break. The reason behind of having this enum is, in some  special cases you might want to skip the next task in the chain or break the complete chain depending upon the currently running task, in those cases you will use the other two values instead of the Continue. The last thing I want to cover in the bootstrapping task is the Order. By default all the built-in tasks as well as newly created task order is set to the DefaultOrder(a static property), in some special cases you might want to execute it before/after all the other tasks, in those cases you will assign the Order in the Task constructor. For Example, in Shrinkr, we want to run few background services when the all the tasks are executed, so we assigned the order as DefaultOrder + 1. Here is the code of that Task: public class ConfigureBackgroundServices : BootstrapperTask { private IEnumerable<IBackgroundService> backgroundServices; public ConfigureBackgroundServices() { Order = DefaultOrder + 1; } protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(IServiceLocator serviceLocator) { backgroundServices = serviceLocator.GetAllInstances<IBackgroundService>().ToList(); backgroundServices.Each(service => service.Start()); return TaskContinuation.Continue; } protected override void DisposeCore() { backgroundServices.Each(service => service.Stop()); } } That’s it for today, in the next post I will cover the custom service registration, so stay tuned.

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  • Getting Started with Media Browser for Windows Media Center

    - by DigitalGeekery
    If you are a Windows Media Center user, you’ll really want to check out Media Browser. The Media Browser plug-in for Windows Media Center takes your digital media files and displays them in a visually appealing, user friendly interface, complete with images and metadata. Requirements Windows 7 or Vista Microsoft .Net 3.5 Framework  Preparing your Media Files For Media Browser to be able to automatically download images and metadata for your media libraries, your files will have to be correctly named. For example, if you have an mp4 file of the movie Batman Begins, it needs to be named Batman Begins.mp4. It cannot be Batmanbegins.mp4 or Batman-begins.mp4. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that Media Browser will display images and metadata. If you find some of your files aren’t pulling cover art or metadata, double-check the official title of the media on a site like IMBD.com. TV Show files TV show files are handled a bit differently. Every TV series in your collection must have a main folder with the show’s name and individual subfolders for each season. Here is an example of folder structure and supported naming conventions. TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\s01e01 – episode 1.mp4 TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\South Park 1×01 – episode 1.mp4 TV Shows\South Park\Season 1\101 – episode 1.mp4  Note: You need to always have a Season 1 folder even if the show only has only one season. If you have several seasons of a particular show, but don’t happen to have Season 1, simply create a blank season 1 folder. Without a season 1 folder, other seasons will not display properly. Installation and Configuration Download and run the latest Media Browser .msi file by taking the defaults. (Download link below) When you reach the final window, leave the “Configure initial settings” box checked, and click “Finish.” You may get a pop up window informing you that folder permissions are not set correctly for Media Browser. Click “Yes.” Adding Your Media The Browser Configuration Tool should have opened automatically. If not, you can open it by going to Start > All Programs > Media Browser > Media Browser Configuration Wizard. To begin adding media files, click “Add.” Browse for a folder that contains media files and click “OK.” Here we are adding a folder with a group of movie files. You can add multiple folders to each media library. For example, if you have movie files stored in 4 or 5 different folders, you can add them all under a single library in Media Browser.  To add additional folders, click the “Add” button on the right side under your currently added folder. The “Add” button to the left will add an additional Media Library, such as one for TV Shows. When you are finished, close out of the Media Browser Configuration Tool. Open Windows Media Center. You will see Media Browser tile on the main interface. Click to open it. When you initially open Media Browser, you will be prompted to run the initial configuration. Click “OK.” You will see a few general configuration options. The important option is the Metadata. Leave this option checked (it is by default) if you wish to pull images & other metadata for your media. When finished, click “Continue,” and then “OK” to restart Media Browser. When you re-enter Media Browser you’ll see your Media Categories listed below, and recently added files in the main display. Click on a Media Library to view the files.   Click “View” at the top to check out some of the different display options to choose from. Below you see can “Detail.” This presents your videos in a list to the left. When you hover over a title, the synopsis and cover art is displayed to the right. “Cover Flow” displays your titles in a right to left format with mirror cover art. “Thumb Strip” displays your titles in a strip along the bottom with a synopsis, image, and movie data above. Configurations Settings and options can be changed through the Media Browser Configuration Tool, or directly in Media Browser by clicking on the “Wrench” at the bottom right of the main Media Browser page. Certain settings may only be available in one location or the other. Some will be available in both places.   Plug-ins and Themes Media Browser features a variety of Plug-ins and Themes that can add optional customization and slick visual appeal. To install plug-ins or themes, open the Media Browser Configuration Tool. Click on the “plug-ins” tab, and then the “More Plug-ins…” button. Note: Clicking on “Advanced” at the top will reveal several additional configuration tabs. Browse the list of plug-ins on the left. When you find want you like, select it and then click “Install.” When the install is complete, you’ll see them listed under “Installed Plug-ins.” To activate any installed theme, click on the “Display” tab. Select it from the Visual Theme drop down list. Close out of the Media Browser Configuration Tool when finished. Some themes, such as the “Diamond” theme shown below, include optional views and settings which can be accessed through a configuration button at the top of the screen. Clicking on the movie gives you additional images and information such as a synopsis, runtime, IMDB rating…   … and even actors and character names.   All that’s left is to hit “Play” when you’re ready to watch.   Conclusion Media Browser is a fantastic plug-in that brings an entirely different level of media management and aesthetics to Windows Media Center. There are numerous additional customizations and configurations we have not covered here such as adding film trailers, music support, and integrating Recorded TV. Media Browser will run on both Windows 7 and Vista. Extenders are also supported but may require additional configuration. Download Media Browser Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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  • How to Manage Your Movies in Boxee

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Boxee is a free cross platform HTPC application that plays media locally and via the Internet. Today we’ll take a look at how to manage your local movie collection in Boxee. Note: We are using the most recent version of Boxee running on Windows 7. Your experience on an earlier version or a Mac or Linux build may vary slightly. If you are using an earlier version of Boxee, we recommend you update to the current version (0.9.21.11487). The latest update features significant improvements in file and media identification. Naming your Movie Files Proper file naming is important for Boxee to correctly identify your movie files. Before you get started you may want to take some time to name your files properly. Boxee supports the following naming conventions: Lawrence of Arabia.avi Lawrence.of.Arabia.avi Lawrence of Arabia (1962).avi Lawrence.of.Arabia(1962).avi For multi-part movies, you can use .part or .cd to identify first and second parts of the movie. Gettysburg.part1.avi Gettysburg.part2.avi If you are unsure of the correct title of the movie, check with IMDB.com. Supported File Types Boxee supports the following video file types and codecs: AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4, M4A, AAC, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia RAM/RM/RV/RA/RMVB, 3gp, VIVO, PVA, NUV, NSV, NSA, FLI, FLC, and DVR-MS (beta support) CDs, DVDs, VCD/SVCD MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (SP and ASP, including DivX, XviD, 3ivx, DV, H.263), MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264), HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, RealVideo, QuickTime, Sorenson, WMV, Cinepak Adding Movie Files to Boxee Boxee will automatically scan your default media folders and add any movie files to My Movies. Boxee will attempt to identify the media and check sources on the web to get data like cover art and other metadata. You can add as many sources to Boxee as you like from your local hard drive, external hard drives or from your network. You will need to make sure you have access to shared folders on the networked computer hosting the media you want to share. You can browse for other folders to scan by selecting Scan Media Folders.   You can also add media files by selecting Settings from the Home screen… Then select Media… and then selecting Add Sources. Browse for your directory and select Add source. Next, you’ll need to select the media type and the type of scanning. You can also change the share name if you’d like. When finished, select Add. You should see a quick notification at the top of the screen that the source was added.   Select Scan source to have Boxee to begin scanning your media files and attempt to properly identify them. Your movies may not show up instantly in My Movies. It will take Boxee some time to fully scan your sources, especially if you have a large collection. Eventually you should see My Movies begin to populate with cover art and metadata.   You can see the progress and find unidentified files by clicking on the yellow arrow to the left, or navigating to the left with your keyboard or remote and selecting Manage Sources.   Here you can see how many files (if any) Boxee failed to identify. To see which titles are unresolved, select Unidentified Files.   Here you’ll find your unresolved files. Select one of the unidentified files to search for the proper movie information. Next, select the Indentify Video icon. Boxee will fill in the title of the file or you edit the title yourself in the text box. Click Search. The results of your search will be displayed. Scroll through and select the title that fits your movie. Check the details of the film to make sure you have the correct title and select Done.   Fixing Incorrectly Indentified Files If you find a movie has been incorrectly identified you can correct it manually. Select the movie. Then search for the correct movie title from the list and select it. When you’re sure you found the correct movie, click Done. Filtering your Movies You can filter your movie collection by genre, or by whether it has been marked as watched or unwatched. When you’ve finished watching a movie, Boxee will mark it as watched.   You can also manually mark a title as watched.   Boxee also features a wide variety of genres by which you can filter the titles in your library. Playing your Movie When you’re ready to start watching a movie, simply select your title.   From here, you can select the “i” icon to read more information about the movie, add it to your queue, or add a shortcut. Click Local File to begin playing.   Now you’re ready to enjoy your movie. If you don’t have a large movie collection or just need more selection, you may want to check out the Netflix App for Boxee. Looking for a Boxee remote? Check out the iPhone App for Boxee. Links Download Boxee IMDB.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Watch Netflix Instant Movies in BoxeeIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Customize the Background in BoxeeUse your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee RemoteGetting Started with Boxee TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free

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  • Fixing a SkyDrive Sync Disaster

    - by Rick Strahl
    For a few months I've been using SkyDrive to handle some basic synching tasks for a number of folders of mine. Specifically I've been dumping a few of my development folders into sky drive so I have a live running backup. It had been working just fine until about a week ago when something went awry. Badly! The idea is that the SkyDrive should sync files, but somewhere in its sync relationship it appears that SkyDrive got confused and assumed it needed to sync back older files to my local machine from the SkyDrive server. So rather than syncing my newer files to the server SkyDrive was pushing older files back to me. Because SkyDrive is so slow actually updating data it's not unusual for SkyDrive to be far behind in syncing and apparently some files were out of date by several months. Of course this is insidious because I didn't notice it for quite some time. I'd been happily working away on my files when a few days ago I noted a bunch of files with -RasXps (my machine name) popping up in various folders. At first I thought my Git repository was giving me a fit, but eventually realized that SkyDrive was actually pushing old files into my monitored folders. To be fair SkyDrive did make backups of the existing files, but by the time I caught it there were literally a few thousand files scattered on my machine that were now updated with old files from online. Here's what some of this looks like: If you look at the directory list you see a bunch of files with a -RasXps postfix appended to them. Those are the files that SkyDrive replaced and backed up on my machine. As you can see the backed up files are actually newer than the ones it pulled from the online SkyDrive. Unless I modified the files after they were updated they all were older than the existing local files. Not exactly how I imagined my synching would work. At first I started cleaning up this mess manually. In most cases the obvious solution was to simply delete the original file and replace with the -RasXps file, but not in all files. Some scrutiny was required and besides being a pain in the ass to rename files, quite frequently I had to dig out Beyond Compare to compare a few files where it wasn't quite clear what's wrong. I quickly realized that doing this by hand would be too hard for the large number of files that got hosed. Hacking together a small .NET Utility So, I figured the easiest way to tackle this is to write a small utility app that shows me all the mangled files that have backups, allows me to compare them and then quickly select and update them, removing the -RasXps file after choosing one of the two files. What I ended up with was a quick and dirty WinForms app that allows me to pick a root folder, and then shows all the -MachineName files: I start by picking a base folder and a template to search for - typically the -MachineName. Clicking Go brings up a list of all files in that folder and its subdirectories.  The list also displays the dates for the saved (-MachineName) file and the current file on disk, along with highlighting for the newer of the two. I can right click on any file and get a context menu pop up to open the folder in Explorer, or open Beyond Compare and view the two files to compare differences which I found very helpful for a number of files where I had modified the files after SkyDrive had updated to an old one. Typically these would be the green files (of which there were thankfully few). To 'fix' files I can select any number of files in the list, then use one of the three buttons on the right to apply an operation. I can use the Saved files - that is the backup file that SkyDrive created with the -MachineName extension (-RasXps above). Or I can use the current file, which is the file with the right name on disk right now and delete the -MachineName file. Or on some occasions I can just opt to delete both of them. For some files like binaries it's often easier to just delete and them be rebuild than choosing. For the most part the process involves accepting the pink files, and checking the few green files and see if any modifications were made since the file was updated incorrectly by SkyDrive. For me luckily those are few in number. Anyways, I thought I share this utility in case anybody else runs into this issue. I've included the VS2012 solution and all the source code so you can see how it works and you can tweak it as needed. The .NET 4.5 binaries are also included if you can't compile. Be warned though!  This rough code is provided as is and makes no guarantees or claims about file safety. All three of the action buttons on the form will delete data. It's a very rough utility and there are no safeguards that ask nicely before deleting files. I highly recommend you make a backup before you have at it. This tools is very narrow in focus, but it might also work with other sync issues from other vendors. I seem to remember that I had similar issues with SugarSync at some point and it too created the -MachineName style files on sync conflicts. Hope this helps somebody out so you can avoid wasting the better part of a full work day on this… Resources Download the Source Code and Binaries for SkyDrive Rescue© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Windows  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Physical Directories vs. MVC View Paths

    - by Rick Strahl
    This post falls into the bucket of operator error on my part, but I want to share this anyway because it describes an issue that has bitten me a few times now and writing it down might keep it a little stronger in my mind. I've been working on an MVC project the last few days, and at the end of a long day I accidentally moved one of my View folders from the MVC Root Folder to the project root. It must have been at the very end of the day before shutting down because tests and manual site navigation worked fine just before I quit for the night. I checked in changes and called it a night. Next day I came back, started running the app and had a lot of breaks with certain views. Oddly custom routes to these controllers/views worked, but stock /{controller}/{action} routes would not. After a bit of spelunking I realized that "Hey one of my View Folders is missing", which made some sense given the error messages I got. I looked in the recycle bin - nothing there, so rather than try to figure out what the hell happened, just restored from my last SVN checkin. At this point the folders are back… but… view access  still ends up breaking for this set of views. Specifically I'm getting the Yellow Screen of Death with: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current context Here's the full error: Server Error in '/ClassifiedsWeb' Application. Compilation ErrorDescription: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current contextSource Error: Line 1: @model ClassifiedsWeb.EntryViewModel Line 2: @{ Line 3: ViewBag.Title = Model.Entry.Title + " - " + ClassifiedsBusiness.App.Configuration.ApplicationName; Source File: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml    Line: 1 Compiler Warning Messages: Show Detailed Compiler Output: Show Complete Compilation Source: Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.272 Here's what's really odd about this error: The views now do exist in the /Views/Classifieds folder of the project, but it appears like MVC is trying to execute the views directly. This is getting pretty weird, man! So I hook up some break points in my controllers to see if my controller actions are getting fired - and sure enough it turns out they are not - but only for those views that were previously 'lost' and then restored from SVN. WTF? At this point I'm thinking that I must have messed up one of the config files, but after some more spelunking and realizing that all the other Controller views work, I give up that idea. Config's gotta be OK if other controllers and views are working. Root Folders and MVC Views don't mix As I mentioned the problem was the fact that I inadvertantly managed to drag my View folder to the root folder of the project. Here's what this looks like in my FUBAR'd project structure after I copied back /Views/Classifieds folder from SVN: There's the actual root folder in the /Views folder and the accidental copy that sits of the root. I of course did not notice the /Classifieds folder at the root because it was excluded and didn't show up in the project. Now, before you call me a complete idiot remember that this happened by accident - an accidental drag probably just before shutting down for the night. :-) So why does this break? MVC should be happy with views in the /Views/Classifieds folder right? While MVC might be happy, IIS is not. The fact that there is a physical folder on disk takes precedence over MVC's routing. In other words if a URL exists that matches a route the pysical path is accessed first. What happens here is that essentially IIS is trying to execute the .cshtml pages directly without ever routing to the Controller methods. In the error page I showed above my clue should have been that the view was served as: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml rather than c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Views\Classifieds\Show.cshtml But of course I didn't notice that right away, just skimming to the end and looking at the file name. The reason that /classifieds/list actually fires that file is that the ASP.NET Web Pages engine looks for physical files on disk that match a path. IOW, when calling Web Pages you drop the .cshtml off the Razor page and IIS will serve that just fine. So: /classifieds/list looks and tries to find /classifieds/list.cshtml and executes that script. And that is exactly what's happening. Web Pages is trying to execute the .cshtml file and it fails because Web Pages knows nothing about the @model tag which is an MVC specific template extension. This is why my breakpoints in the controller methods didn't fire and it also explains why the error mentions that the @model key word is invalid (@model is an MVC provided template enhancement to the Razor Engine). The solution of course is super simple: Delete the accidentally created root folder and the problem is solved. Routing and Physical Paths I've run into problems with this before actually. In the past I've had a number of applications that had a physical /Admin folder which also would conflict with an MVC Admin controller. More than once I ended up wondering why the index route (/Admin/) was not working properly. If a physical /Admin folder exists /Admin will not route to the Index action (or whatever default action you have set up, but instead try to list the directory or show the default document in the folder. The only way to force the index page through MVC is to explicitly use /Admin/Index. Makes perfect sense once you realize the physical folder is there, but that's easy to forget in an MVC application. As you might imagine after a few times of running into this I gave up on the Admin folder and moved everything into MVC views to handle those operations. Still it's one of those things that can easily bite you, because the behavior and error messages seem to point at completely different  problems. Moral of the story is: If you see routing problems where routes are not reaching obvious controller methods, always check to make sure there's isn't a physical path being mapped by IIS instead. That way you won't feel stupid like I did after trying a million things for about an hour before discovering my sloppy mousing behavior :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC   IIS7   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • How to Manage AutoArchive in Outlook 2010

    - by Mysticgeek
    If you want to keep Outlook 2010 clean and run faster, one method is to set up the AutoArchive feature. Today we show you how to configure and manage the feature in Outlook 2010. Using AutoArchive allows you to manage space in your mailbox or on the email server by moving older items to another location on your hard drive. Enable and Configure Auto Archive In Outlook 2010 Auto Archive is not enabled by default. To turn it on, click on the File tab to access Backstage View, then click on Options. The Outlook Options window opens then click on Advanced then the AutoArchive Settings button. The AutoArchive window opens and you’ll notice everything is grayed out. Check the box next to Run AutoArchive every… Note: If you select the Permanently delete old items option, mails will not be archived. Now you can choose the settings for how you want to manage the AutoArchive feature. Select how often you want it to run, prompt before the feature runs, where to move items, and other actions you want to happen during the process. After you’ve made your selections click OK. Manually Configure Individual Folders For more control over individual folders that are archived, right-click on the folder and click on Properties. Click on the AutoArchive tab and choose the settings you want to change for that folder. For instance you might not want to archive a certain folder or move archived data to a specific folder. If you want to manually archive and backup an item, click on the File tab, Cleanup Tools, then Archive. Click the radio button next to Archive this folder and all subfolders. Select the folder you want to archive. In this example we want to archive this folder to a specific location of its own. The .pst files are saved in your documents folder and if you need to access them at a later time you can. After you’ve setup AutoArchive you can find items in the archived files. In the Navigation Pane expand the Archives folder in the list. You can then view and access your messages. You can also access them by clicking the File tab \ Open then Open Outlook Data File. Then you can browse to the archived file you want to open. Archiving old emails is a good way to help keep a nice clean mailbox, help speed up your Outlook experience, and save space on the email server. The other nice thing is you can configure your email archives and specific folders to meet your email needs. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Configure AutoArchive In Outlook 2007Quickly Clean Your Inbox in Outlook 2003/2007Open Different Outlook Features in Separate Windows to Improve ProductivityMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsCreate an Email Template in Outlook 2003 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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  • Stream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media Player

    - by DigitalGeekery
    So you’ve got yourself a new computer with Windows 7 and you’re itching to take advantage of it’s ability to stream media across your home network. But, the rest of the family is still on Windows XP and you’re not quite ready to shell out the cash for the upgrades. Well, today we’ll show you how to easily stream media from Windows 7 to Windows XP with VLC Media Player. On the host computer running Windows 7, you’ll need to have an account set up with both a username and password. A blank password will not work. The media files will need to be located in a shared folder. Note: If the media files are located within the Public directory, or within the profile of the user account you use to log into the Windows 7 computer, they will be shared automatically. Sharing your Media Folders On your Windows 7 computer, right-click on the folder containing the files you’d like to stream and choose Properties.     On the Sharing Tab of the folder properties, click the Share button. Click OK.   Type or select from the drop down the user account you’ll use to log in, or select “Everyone” to share with all users. Then click Add. You may change the permission level, but only Read permission is required to play the media. Repeat this process for any additional folders you wish to share.    The Windows XP Client Computer Now that we’ve shared our media folders from the Windows 7 computer, we’re ready to play our files on the Windows XP computer. Download and install the VLC Media Player. (See link below) Then open VLC. Click on Media from the and select Open File… Browse your network for the shared folder that contains your media.   You’ll be prompted to log in to the host computer. Provide the credentials for a user on the Windows 7 computer. Click OK.   Select your media file and click Open.    Your media playback will begin momentarily.   This is a nice and easy way to stream media across your home network without upgrading multiple computers to Windows 7.  Plus, VLC is certainly no slouch as a Media Player. It’ll play virtually any video or audio file you can throw at it. Have you already upgraded all your home PCs to Windows 7? Check out our previous article on streaming media between Windows 7 computers on your home network. Download VLC Media Player Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Need Help with Your Home Network? Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images

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  • Outlook 2010 – My Top 9 features

    - by Daniel Moth
    Office 2010 has reached RTM. Here are my favorite Outlook features. Speed. It is faster than previous versions and hangs much less… Ignore Conversation (Ctrl+Del). Not interested in a conversation? Click this button on the new ribbon and you'll never receive another message on that thread (they all go to your Deleted folder). Calendar Preview. When receiving a Meeting Request, before deciding to accept or not you get to see a preview of your calendar for that day and where the new meeting would fit in. See full description on outlook team blog post. Quick Steps. See full description on outlook team blog post. I have created my own quick steps for filing conversations to folders, various pre-populated reply templates, creating calendar invites and creating TODOs from received emails. Search Interface. Many of us knew the magic keywords for making smart searches (e.g. from:Name), but it is great to learn many more through the search tools contextual ribbon tab. Next 7 days. Out of the many enhancements to the Calendar view, my favorite is to be able with  single click to view the next 7 days – that is now my default view. MailTips. See full description on outlook team blog post. The ones I particularly like are when composing a mail to someone that has their Out Of Office reply set, you get to read it before sending the mail (and hence can decide to postpone sending). when composing a mail to a distribution list, a message informs you of the number of recipients. Hopefully, senders will use that as a clue for narrowing down the recipient list or at least verifying that their mail should indeed be sent to so many people. "You are not responding to the latest message in this conversation. Click here to open it.". When composing a reply to a conversation and you have not picked the last message to reply to (don't you hate it when people split threads like that?), this is the inline message you see (under the MailTips area) and if you click on the message it opens the last mail in the conversation so you can reply to that. Rich "Conversation Settings" and in particular "Show Messages from Other Folders". For example, you can see in your inbox not only the message you received but also the reply you sent (it gets pulled in from the Sent folder). Another example: a conversation has been taking place on a distribution list (so your rules filed it to a folder) and they add you on the TO or CC line, so it appears in a different folder; regardless of which folder you open, you are able to see the entire conversation. Note that messages from other folders than the one you are browsing, appear in grey text so you can easily spot them. Reading them in one folder, obviously marks them as read in the other folder… If you haven't yet, when are you making the move to Outlook 2010? Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • The dislikes of TDD

    - by andrewstopford
    I enjoy debates about TDD and Brian Harrys blog post is no exception. Brian sounds out what he likes and dislikes about TDD and it's the dislikes I'll focus on. The idea of having unit tests that cover virtually every line of code that I’ve written that I have to refactor every time I refactor my code makes me shudder.  Doing this way makes me take nearly twice as long as it would otherwise take and I don’t feel like I get sufficient benefits from it. Refactoring your tests to match your refactored code sounds like the tests are suffering. Too many hard dependencies with no SOLID concerns are a sure fire reason you would do this. Maybe at the start of a TDD cycle you would need to do this as your design evolves and you remove these dependencies but this should quickly be resolved as you refactor. If you find your self still doing it then stop and look back at your design. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of unit tests.  I just prefer to write them after the code has stopped shaking a bit.  In fact most of my early testing is “manual”.  Either I write a small UI on top of my service that allows me to plug in values and try it or write some quick API tests that I throw away as soon as I have validated them. The problem with this is that a UI can make assumptions on your code that then just unit test around and very quickly the design becomes bad and you technical debt sweeps in. If you want to blackbox test your code with a UI then do so after your TDD cycles not before. This is probably by biggest issue with a literal TDD interpretation.  TDD says you never write a line of code without a failing test to show you need it.  I find it leads developers down a dangerous path.  Without any help from a methodology, I have met way too many developers in my life that “back into a solution”.  By this, I mean they write something, it mostly works and they discover a new requirement so they tack it on, and another and another and when they are done, they’ve got a monstrosity of special cases each designed to handle one specific scenario.  There’s way more code than there should be and it’s way too complicated to understand. I believe in finding general solutions to problems from which all the special cases naturally derive rather than building a solution of special cases.  In my mind, to do this, you have to start by conceptualizing and coding the framework of the general algorithm.  For me, that’s a relatively monolithic exercise. TDD is an development pratice not a methodology, the danger is that the solution becomes a mass of different things that violate DRY. TDD won't solve these problems, only good communication and practices like pairing will help. Above all else an assumption that TDD replaces a methodology is a mistake, combine it with what ever works for your team\business but only good communication will help. A good naming scheme\structure for folders, files and tests can help you and your team isolate what tests are for what.

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  • Add Spell Checking to Your Favorite Windows Apps

    - by Asian Angel
    Some but not all Windows apps have built-in spell checking of some sort. If you want to add spell checking to all of your apps (or a select group) then join us as we look at tinySpell. Note: There is a paid version of this software (tinySpell+) available as well for those who want extra functionality. tinySpell in Action The installation process is simple and straightforward…as soon as you have finished installing tinySpell you will see your new “System Tray Icon”. You can see tinySpell’s “Context Menu” here. Before going any further you may want to have a look through the settings to make any desired display modifications. During our tests we found it very helpful to modify the Spelling Tip options…it will make for a much nicer and easier to read display when you have a spelling error. Clicking on the Applications… Command in the Context Menu will bring up the following window. You can really finesse how active tinySpell will be here: Create a special list of apps that tinySpell will not monitor Create a custom list of apps that tinySpell will monitor If you have any particular or unique words that you would like to add to tinySpell’s Dictionary ahead of time you can do that by clicking on the Dictionary… Command in the Context Menu. Want to check the spelling of a word ahead of time or find that you are just curious about how it is spelled? Click on Open spelling window in the Context Menu to access a special spell check window. For our example we misspelled “spelling” on purpose…notice that the word has turned red. Clicking on the Check Mark Button will open a drop-down list with suggested spellings for the word that you are inquiring about. Click on the appropriate listing if you intend to copy and paste the word. Next we moved on to Notepad. As we were typing tinySpell alerted us when we typed the word “app”. You will hear a small default system sound and see a small popup as shown here if tinySpell thinks a word has been misspelled. The System Tray Icon will also change to a yellow color. You can access the list of suggested spellings by either left clicking on the small popup or the System Tray Icon. If the word is a properly spelled “abbreviation” (or special/custom) like our word here you can select Add to dictionary. Going further in our text document we once again purposely misspelled “spelling”… Left clicking on the popup gave us access to the drop-down list of suggested spellings… And clicking on the correct spelling automatically inserted it into our document in place of the misspelled word. As you can see here tinySpell was even monitoring file names when we went to save the document. Very thorough indeed. Conclusion If your favorite app does not have built-in spell checking, then tinySpell will definitely be a welcome (and very helpful) addition to your Windows system. They offer a portable version as well so you can take it with you to any PC. Links Download tinySpell *Note: The download link is located approximately half-way down the page. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input FieldsEdit the Windows Live Writer Custom DictionaryAccess Your Favorite Google Services in Chrome the Easy WayLaunch External Apps from FirefoxNinite Makes Installing Software Incredibly Simple TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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  • Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Like most SQL Server users I'm rather frustrated by Microsoft's insistence on making the really cool features only available in Enterprise Edition.  And it really doesn't help that they changed the licensing for SQL 2012 to be core-based, so now it's like 4 times as expensive!  It almost makes you want to go with Oracle.  That, and a desire to have Larry Ellison do things to your orifices. And since they've introduced Availability Groups, and marked database mirroring as deprecated, you'd think they'd make make mirroring available in all editions.  Alas…they don't…officially anyway.  Thanks to my constant poking around in places I'm not "supposed" to, I've discovered the low-level code that implements database mirroring, and found that it's available in all editions! It turns out that the query processor in all SQL Server editions prepends a simple check before every edition-specific DDL statement: IF CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') as nvarchar(max)) NOT LIKE '%e%e%e% Edition%' print 'Lame' else print 'Cool' If that statement returns true, it fails. (the print statements are just placeholders)  Go ahead and test it on Standard, Workgroup, and Express editions compared to an Enterprise or Developer edition instance (which support everything). Once again thanks to Argenis Fernandez (b | t) and his awesome sessions on using Sysinternals, I was able to watch the exact process SQL Server performs when setting up a mirror.  Surprisingly, it's not actually implemented in SQL Server!  Some of it is, but that's something of a smokescreen, the real meat of it is simple filesystem primitives. The NTFS filesystem supports links, both hard links and symbolic, so that you can create two entries for the same file in different directories and/or different names.  You can create them using the MKLINK command in a command prompt: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Log D:\Log This creates a symbolic link from my data and log folders to my Skydrive folder.  Any file saved in either location will instantly appear in the other.  And since my Skydrive will be automatically synchronized with the cloud, any changes I make will be copied instantly (depending on my internet bandwidth of course). So what does this have to do with database mirroring?  Well, it seems that the mirroring endpoint that you have to create between mirror and principal servers is really nothing more than a Skydrive link.  Although it doesn't actually use Skydrive, it performs the same function.  So in effect, the following statement: ALTER DATABASE Mir SET PARTNER='TCP://MyOtherServer.domain.com:5022' Is turned into: mklink /D "D:\Data" "\\MyOtherServer.domain.com\5022$" The 5022$ "port" is actually a hidden system directory on the principal and mirror servers. I haven't quite figured out how the log files are included in this, or why you have to SET PARTNER on both principal and mirror servers, except maybe that mklink has to do something special when linking across servers.  I couldn't get the above statement to work correctly, but found that doing mklink to a local Skydrive folder gave me similar functionality. To wrap this up, all you have to do is the following: Install Skydrive on both SQL Servers (principal and mirror) and set the local Skydrive folder (D:\SkyDrive in these examples) On the principal server, run mklink /D on the data and log folders to point to SkyDrive: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data On the mirror server, run the complementary linking: mklink /D D:\Data D:\SkyDrive\Data Create your database and make sure the files map to the principal data and log folders (D:\Data and D:\Log) Viola! Your databases are kept in sync on multiple servers! One wrinkle you will encounter is that the mirror server will show the data and log files, but you won't be able to attach them to the mirror SQL instance while they are attached to the principal. I think this is a bug in the Skydrive, but as it turns out that's fine: you can't access a mirror while it's hosted on the principal either.  So you don't quite get automatic failover, but you can attach the files to the mirror if the principal goes offline.  It's also not exactly synchronous, but it's better than nothing, and easier than either replication or log shipping with a lot less latency. I will end this with the obvious "not supported by Microsoft" and "Don't do this in production without an updated resume" spiel that you should by now assume with every one of my blog posts, especially considering the date.

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